


Whatever It Takes (I Will Be Right Here Waiting For You)

by snow_covered_hills



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Big angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain Marvel (2019) Spoilers, Established Relationship, Eventual Smut, Explicit Language, F/F, Family Reunions, Fix-It of Sorts, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Married Couple, Mild Language, Missing Scenes, Reunions, during endgame, like huge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 14:12:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19401955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snow_covered_hills/pseuds/snow_covered_hills
Summary: Carol Danvers, always so good at compartmentalizing, at masking her feelings, at being the strong one, the unwavering soldier, has found her breaking point. And it’s those two little piles of dust on the floor. In that moment, she falls to pieces.Or, Endgame from Carol's POV because Marvel rly didn't give us enough Carol Danvers in this movie.Title comes from the song "Right Here Waiting" by Richard Marx





	1. The Decimation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carol is in the midst of a space battle when she realizes something is wrong. Her enemies are turning to dust...and Maria keeps calling her...

_Thwack!_

Carol feels the familiar sting of knuckles smacking her face. The feeling is muted, and fails to do much more than anger her, as she shakes it off and fires a photon blast into her attacker’s chest, launching them across the corridor. 

“Bad idea.” 

She proceeds down the corridor. Her radio crackles. 

  
“Carol! Come in!” 

Talos’s gruff voice calls to her from the bridge. She presses a finger to her earpiece. 

“I’m here.”

“We need you outside, our fighters are getting overwhelmed!”

A smirk grazes the Captain’s face as she activates her helmet. She relishes any opportunity to kick ass and take names, especially against the Kree. 

“On it.”

With that she opens the nearest airlock and flies out into space - usually empty and tranquil, but today it’s filled with a dozen Kree drones and fighters, a handful of Skrull fighters,and an endless stream of gunfire and explosions. They were a scouting party, sent to explore new worlds to colonize, she guessed. They'd happened upon Talos and the Skrulls aboard Mar-Vell's laboratory and things had gone downhill from there. That's when they called Carol.

_Just a normal day at the office._

Carol quickly dispatches a chunk of the Kree ships before a familiar chirp diverts her attention from the fight. She glances down at her wrist to see her communicator lighting up, with the grainy image of one Maria Rambeau flickering on the screen. She frowns. Ordinarily the image of her wife would immediately bring a smile to her face, especially since it's been 11 days since they had spoken, but something isn't right this time. 

_Why is she calling me now? It’s nowhere near our scheduled call time._

Her heart skips a beat. Something must be wrong. Really wrong. Maria wouldn’t call her out of the blue unless there was an emergency. She’s so enveloped in that small hologram on her wrist that she doesn’t see the cannon leveled at her, doesn’t notice the energy beam careening towards her. The impact sends her hurtling through space until she slams into the outer wall of the Skrull ship. Dazed, but no less pissed off, Carol dusts herself off and propels herself towards the offending ship like a comet. Within seconds, it’s reduced to a cluster of sparking, smoldering debris. As the wreckage clears, she’s left face to face with a Kree warrior. She can’t help but revert to her usual wisecracking ways. 

“Wow, you guys got cool new space suits? Maybe I _should’ve_ stuck around.” 

Carol lunges towards the soldier, fist coming down in what would’ve been a devastating punch, but her strike doesn’t connect. She’s thrown off balance by the lack of contact and whirls around to find nothing but dust. 

_What the hell…_

She looks around to find that the shooting has stopped. The remaining Kree starfighters are drifting aimlessly, pilotless. A horrible dread starts pooling in her stomach. She flies back into Mar-Vell’s mobile lab and sprints up to the bridge in search of Talos. The ship is all but deserted. Where there were once busy corridors filled with soldiers, engineers and technicians, there is only dust and battle damage. The rec room where Carol would play games with Talos’s grandchildren is void of the usual ruckus. Reaching the bridge, She scans the room and finds only a handful of Skrulls, all looking as disoriented and alarmed as she is. Talos is nowhere to be found, his captain’s chair empty save for a small pile of dust. Carol checks her communicator again. Maria has called her three more times. Just as she’s raising her hand to call her back, the communicator blares a distinctive alert. She knows the sound immediately, and it only serves to tighten the knot in her stomach. The feeling of dread shoots through her whole body like she’s been lit on fire in that instant. 

_Fury._

His pager. The distress signal meant to be used only in the most dire of emergencies. Those even the Avengers couldn’t handle. The familiar yet scarcely used alarm flickers and screams on her wrist display. Carol swallows the lump in her throat and her face tightens with resolve. Without a second thought she launches herself out of the lab and towards C-53. 

_I have to get home._

**____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________**

“Mom, come here and look at this.”

Monica stands in the living room, fixated on the television. Maria makes her way in from the kitchen to join her. 

  
“What is it?”

Monica wordlessly gestures towards the television and the two women stare in awe, in horror at what is happening. Pure chaos. Cars have crashed into each other, a downed helicopter lays in the middle of the street, and the people are...turning to ash? 

“What the hell..?”

Maria doesn’t know how to process what she’s seeing. All these years of watching so much crazy shit go down, between being in the Air Force, being married to an immortal intergalactic warrior who can light herself on fire and fly, and everything in between, but she’s at a loss for words now because this...this is something else. Something widespread and devastating. 

“Should we call Aunt Carol?” 

Her daughter’s voice snaps her out of her daze and she runs upstairs to find the communicator Carol left them all those years ago. Something to tide them over between her visits, however long the time between them would be. And something to reassure them both that if trouble should ever befall the Rambeau household, Maria could always call on her wife, who would get there in the blink of an eye. She sprints up the stairs, the speed at which she reaches the bedroom aided by the Kree blood coursing through her veins. Grasping the thin but sturdy metal disc she presses the call button urgently, praying that Carol will pick up.

_Please, please, please be okay. Please let me hear your voice._

Nothing. 

She tries again. And again. Still nothing. Letting out a grunt of frustration and worry, she slams it down on the nightstand. 

“Goddamnit Carol, would it kill you to keep your ringer on once in a while?” 

Maria shakes her head, trying to banish the building anxiety in her chest. 

_What if she’s dead? What if she’s too far out of range and she has no idea what’s going on here? What if her communicator is broken? What if.._

Monica’s voice again yanks her back to reality. There’s panic in her daughter’s voice unlike any she’s ever heard. Sheer, raw panic, and it’s enough to make her blood run cold. 

“MOM?!”

Maria is downstairs and by her daughter’s side in an instant, still clutching the communicator. 

“What’s wrong baby?” 

Monica shakes her head, clutching her stomach, her eyes filled with confusion and terror.

“I don’t know."

Her eyes meet her mother’s, and Maria can almost see the light leaving them. 

“Mom, what’s happen-”

The question is cut off as the young woman’s body dissolves into thousands of flaky particles before Maria’s eyes. Nothing is left of her daughter except a scattered mound of dust on the floor. Maria blinks rapidly, as if to confirm what she just saw was real. She reaches out helplessly into the vacant space where her daughter stood just seconds before. 

“...Monica?”

It’s a pointless question. She’s calling out to an empty room. Before it can even settle in, before the tears can start flowing, she feels her body growing weaker, lighter. It’s happening to her too. She clicks the call button forlornly. One final attempt to let Carol know what’s happening before all she is is dust on the ground. Maria is resigned to her fate. Her daughter was just vaporized in front of her. What else is a person to do? She sighs, feeling the weakness in her body intensify. 

_So this is how it ends. I’m sorry, Carol._

Maria’s eyes close as her body falls to dust. There’s no sound left but the faint, panicked chatter of news anchors on the television, and the light beeping of her communicator, lying next to her wedding ring in a clump of dust being gently carried throughout the house by the humid Louisiana breeze. 

**___________________________________________________________________________________________________________**

Carol all but crash lands in the front yard. She slams down into the dirt _hard,_ but barely feels it. She retracts her helmet and makes a mad dash for the front door, blood roaring in her ears. 

_Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay._

She repeats it in her head over and over and over, praying to every god she knows of that her family is safe. That she’ll walk in to find her wife and daughter smiling brightly at her, asking her what took so long, eager to hear stories of her adventures in the cosmos. She bursts through the door, frantically scanning the house. 

  
“Maria?! Monica?!” 

She freezes dead in her tracks when she gets to the living room. When she sees the two piles of dust on the floor, sees the still flickering communicator next to the delicate silver ring she presented Maria nearly 30 years ago. 

_No. No it can’t be._

She numbly trudges over to the scene and just stares blankly for a moment, unwilling to accept the horrible truth that’s staring her in the face. Her eyes flitter up to the television and she watches the devastation in the streets, people turning to dust, airplanes crashing, buildings on fire. Fury’s distress signal is still ringing on her communicator but she hardly hears it. None of it matters. Nothing means anything anymore. Nothing except the deafening silence threatening to smother her, the emptiness closing in on her, in the place that used to be her home, her safe place. Nothing matters except the fact that her entire world has been reduced to a heap of dust on the floor and she was too late to stop it. Too late to even say goodbye. Or hello for that matter. 

_11 days since we talked. I was going to call them tomorrow morning._

Carol Danvers, always so good at compartmentalizing, at masking her feelings, at being the strong one, the unwavering soldier, has found her breaking point. And it’s those two little clumps of dust on the floor. In that moment, she breaks. Carol Danvers sinks to her knees, unleashing a terrible, mournful howl that would strike fear and pain into the hearts of anyone who was still alive to hear it. She curls up into a ball on the worn wooden floor and lets herself drown in tears, wrapping her arms around herself like a child in distress. Harsh, ragged sobs wrack her body as she writhes and wails, no words to express the loss, the guilt she feels. No respite from the pain. Nothing left to say or do. All that remains for Carol Danvers is the irrefutable, inescapable truth. 

She had failed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first fic I've ever written pls be gentle with me i'm not good with english.  
> so yeah, that was pretty heavy. Also yes Maria hasn't aged since 1995, and if you want to find out why that is, it'll be explained in a future fic. I couldn't bear the thought of her growing old and dying and Carol staying forever young, so I made it so Maria has Kree blood too. Monica would be in her early 30's at this point I think. I'm unsure of when she gets her powers in the comics so that will come later. Not in this fic though, this is about Endgame. I hope you all like it :)


	2. Picking Up the Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carol struggles to go on without her family, but she realizes she has a job to do.

14 days.

It had been 14 days since Carol Danvers spoke to her family. 14 days since she got to see Maria’s radiant smile, usually brought on by some dumb joke Carol had said. 14 days since she got to hear about her daughter’s experiences at her new job, since she got to make her laugh. 14 days since Carol had felt whole. 14 days ago she told her family she’d see them within the month. 3 days ago, she came home to find they’d been taken from her. Ripped out of her hands by some maniac halfway across the globe. All with a snap of his fingers. It was so stupid to her. Just a snap of his fingers and her whole world was gone. Like it was nothing to him. 

Carol barely remembers the last 3 days. The first day she didn’t do much except cry. Somewhere in her throes of despair she must’ve fallen asleep because she woke up on the floor around 3 AM, part of her hoping it was all a horrible dream and she’d wake to find Maria making pancakes in the kitchen and Monica tinkering with a plane in the backyard, and everything would be all right. She quickly realized this was not the case as she pushed herself off the floor and her hand sank into the pile of dust that used to be her wife. That was all it took for her to break down again. Carol wasn’t sure how she had any tears left to cry. It was a good few hours before she fell asleep a second time. 

On the second day, Carol decided she was going to do something. She swept up the dust and poured it reverently into a jar, sealing it and placing it under the bed upstairs. It seemed like the least disrespectful thing she could do. She sat and watched the news for hours, watching the devastation. Billions of people dead. “Vanished” they said. A gentler word than “dead”. As if that somehow made it better. As if those billions of people were somehow coming back. She still didn’t know what had happened or why. But she decided she was determined to find out, and to slaughter whoever was responsible. She wasn’t quite ready to leave yet though. She wanted one more night at home, one more night sleeping in the bed she and Maria shared for decades, where Monica would jump in and snuggle with them when she was small. One more night alone with the memories of her family. 

She fell asleep clutching Maria’s pillow close to her, drinking in the ghost of her scent.The only sound in the old, empty house was Carol’s sobs cutting through the dark.

On the third day, she grabbed one of Maria’s old T-shirts and slipped it on underneath her armor. It was a small comfort. Nowhere close to having her wife's arms around her, but it would have to do. She slid Maria’s wedding band on her middle finger, nestled snugly next to hers. After a bit of searching, she found the terry cloth armband Monica had gotten her for her birthday one year, red with an F-18 stitched into the middle of it. It was against uniform regulations, but ever since Monica had given her that armband, she'd worn it on every single flight she took, slid just high enough up her wrist to be concealed by the sleeve of her flight suit. It was her lucky charm. The day she and Lawson crashed and she was taken by the Kree, Carol had been so eager to beat Maria to the base she'd forgotten to put it on. They would joke about it years later, citing the lack of her lucky armband as the reason why everything went to shit that day.

She shook herself out of her nostalgic stupor and checked the communicator on her wrist. Fury’s distress signal was coming from New York. That was where Carol needed to go. Fury would know what had happened, if he was even still alive. Taking one final look at the deserted house, she plugged the coordinates into her nav system and took off -- not looking back once. 

* * *

Carol switches off the alarm on her wrist as she reaches the Avengers' compound. She hears the Avengers debating what to do about the pager. She'd more or less kept up with their activities over the years. Enough to know most of them by name, or code name. The one known as Black Widow -- one of Fury’s favorites, she seems to be the one in charge now. As they try to reboot the pager, she turns and meets Carol’s eyes with a start. Carol cares little for pleasantries. She only needs to know one thing. 

“Where’s Fury?”

They tell her they don’t know. They haven’t heard from him. Carol fears the worst. Captain Rogers tells her what happened. Thanos. The stones. The snap. Everything. He says the rest of the team is stranded in space. Tony Stark, someone named Nebula, and maybe others. It’s all Carol needs to get out. Get moving. Get away from this planet, from all she’s lost. All she’s failed to protect. Going on a deep space rescue mission is the perfect excuse to get far away from this place that once brought her comfort and security but now only brings her pain. 

“I’ll find them.” She says without hesitation. Rogers nods and thanks her, and with that she’s off. 

* * *

18 days later, Carol finds Tony Stark adrift in space. She tows the ship back to C-53 and sets it down gently on the Avengers’ front lawn, much to the relief and gratitude of the rest of the team. She can’t stop her heart from breaking at the sight of Pepper, Tony’s wife, tearfully embracing her husband, weak from hunger but nonetheless elated to see her. She thinks of Maria and runs her finger over the smooth, cold silver encasing her middle finger. Pepper hugs her fiercely, thanking her. Carol doesn’t let her see the despair on her face. 

She watches this “team”, this dysfunctional group of misfits squabble amongst each other for 3 straight days. Stark and Rogers seem to have some deep seated vitriol between them. She doesn’t particularly care why. All she cares about is finding this murderous bastard, Thanos. This cretin who had taken everything from her. She was going to make him pay. 

Carol watches the screen detailing the aftermath of what happened. She sees Fury’s face on the screen with “MISSING” stamped in angry red letters beneath it. She almost breaks in that moment. Fury is gone. The last piece of her life on Earth is gone. 

_I’ve really got nothing left. Not even him. My old friend._

She can’t let herself fall apart in front of everyone. She won’t allow herself to show any weakness. Not in front of these people she just met nearly 3 weeks ago. 

_Feeling things doesn’t make you weak, Carol. Just means you’re human._

Maria’s words echo in her head and it’s almost too much to bear. She chokes down the rage bubbling in her chest and swallows hard. Now is not the time to drown in her grief. They’ve got shit to do, and they’ve all lost people. Carol shakes it off and keeps her composure. 

They manage to locate Thanos, holed up on some uninhabited planet halfway across the galaxy. Carol allows herself to feel a pang of hope. All they need to do is take the infinity stones and use them to bring everyone back, she tells the team. It’s painfully simple, but they’re sure it’ll work. It has to. Carol doesn’t know what she’ll do if it doesn’t. Banner questions how it will end any differently than it did before. 

“Because before, you didn’t have me.” Carol responds plainly. It’s true. She’s fueled by pure, unbridled rage now. There’s no force in this galaxy or the next that could stop her from killing Thanos. 

Within an hour, they’re on their way to Thanos’s planet. Carol thumbs the worn out photograph of herself, Maria, and Monica she keeps over her heart, protected by her armor. It’s an old photo, taken before Monica had lost her first baby tooth. She’s spent a lot of time staring at this little tattered piece of her life. On Mar-Vell’s lab, trying desperately to force herself to remember the day it was taken, in the cockpit of her bird, every time she went up in the air, to remind herself what she had waiting for her, why she needed to get back home safe, on some desolate world far from Louisiana, when she doubted she would ever make it back and wanted the last thing she saw to be the smiling faces of her family, and now on this rickety old spaceship, headed off to confront the Mad Titan and take back what he’d stolen from her, from everyone. She was going to make things right. 

_Whatever it takes._

* * *

Carol is frozen in place as Thanos’s head rolls across the floor of the hut. Reality is setting in. The stones are gone. Their last shot at reversing the damage Thanos did is gone. It's over.

_“Reduced to atoms”, he said. Just like everyone I love. And I can't even get revenge._

Thor dejectedly stumbles outside and stops on the steps, staring silently off at the horizon with pure defeat in his eyes. Carol follows him outside and blasts off without a word. No destination in mind, she just needs to get away, get anywhere. As far away from Thanos and the Avengers and the crippling weight of reality. Somewhere where the ghosts of the people she’d failed to save can’t haunt her. 

She doesn’t cry for a while. Not until she reaches a distant asteroid somewhere a few hundred light years away, where she’s completely and utterly alone, with nothing but the rocks and the stars and the vast nothingness of space to keep her company. Here Carol has no pressure to keep her emotions in check, no battles to throw herself into, nothing to distract herself from the cold, harsh truth that refused to let her think of anything else. Just when she thought she could sink no lower than the floor of her home in Louisiana, the universe proves her wrong yet again. she crumples to her knees, and then to her side, hugging her knees close to her chest and tucking her head in, making herself impossibly small. Her sobs rock her to sleep and she dreams of home. 

  
_Where’s your head at?_

A misty, glowing image of Maria asks her as she lays listless on a grass field somewhere. Maria's and her backyard, she thinks.

_With you._ She whispers. If Maria were here she’d lie down with her, hold her, stroke her hair and just listen. She’d listen and then she’d drag Carol to her feet and tell her to stop feeling sorry for herself and get back to work, because there’s always a job to do. No matter what happens, the mission comes first. The Air Force had drilled that into them.

The shimmering mirage of her wife offers Carol her hand. _On your feet, Danvers, you got important shit to do._ Carol can hear Maria’s warm yet firm voice clear as day, commanding her to keep going. She takes her hand and wearily climbs to her feet. 

_Maria, I don't know if I can. Not without you and Monica._ Her eyes plead with Maria, begging her to please just be real, please don't fade away when she wakes. _Take me with you. S_ he thinks.

Maria shakes her head and gives her a sad smile. _Come on, Danvers. I can make it 6 years without you but you can't make it a month without me?_

Carol hangs her head, tears streaming down her face now. _Please...I don't want to wake up from this dream. I don't want you to go. Please stay with me, please..._ Carol puts her arms out to hug Maria but she flickers like a hologram and nearly dissipates. Carol jerks back, afraid she might've ruined this. 

_We always knew this could happen, Carol. Back when we were flying together, there was always a chance once of us wouldn't make it home. Do you remember what we promised each other back then?_ Carol swallows and gives Maria a small nod. Maria looks at her expectantly. _Well?_ Carol recites their vow to each other, made in the locker room on base after a routine flight that almost went horribly wrong. 

_If one of us doesn't make it, whoever's left isn't gonna quit. They're gonna keep going and get the job done as best as they can, because anything else would be a goddamn disgrace._

Maria gives Carol an encouraging smile and a nod. _There you go. You can do this. The Avengers need you. And so does everyone else in the universe. Now more than ever. You gonna keep your promise?_

The fire ever present in Carol's heart reignites slightly at this, at the thought of letting Maria down. She has to go on. She has to do her job. She owes that much to Maria and Monica. It's the least she can do. _I will._ She vows. 

_Good._ Maria backs away, her image already fading. Carol watches and tries to choke down the tears. _I love you._ She calls after the vision.

As soon as the words leave her lips, she's jolted back into consciousness. She wakes up on her feet, fists glowing. She takes a deep breath and absorbs Maria's words, memorizes them. She will carry them with her and do whatever it takes to live up to them. She takes one more look at the photo of her family and nods to herself, putting it carefully back in its place. 

_I'll do my best._

She takes off, setting a course for Mar-Vell's lab. The Skrulls have been her oldest friends out here. No better place to start. She'll keep her line open in case the Avengers need help, but she doesn't think she can stomach setting foot on C-53 again. At least not for a long time. 

_Time to go save the universe._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaah thank you so much for your comments they really mean a lot to me <3\. It might be a minute before the next chapter is up bc work but i promise to stop hurting carol eventually :)


End file.
